review: end search

I got this and the two by four video in the mail the other day, so I’ll try to get a review of each up soon.

End Search just won video of the year at nora cup, so that should be some kind of indication that it’s pretty good. It features a cast of Greenville super pros, along with one street guy I’d never heard of, who I think had the best part.

Music: A little too emo (thought I’d never have to use that word post 2002…) for my taste, although they score some points for using Joy Division in Ty Morrow’s part.

Filming: A lot of fisheye (a whole bunch). Personally I’m not a huge fan of fisheye overload, I like to see an accurate perspective of the scale of a trick and a realistic view of the obstacle. I did read somewhere that the editors were going for a skate video like feel, which would explain that, but it’s still not my cup of tea. Style preferences aside, the camerawork is pretty good. Everything is exposed nicely (generators are used at night) and each shot seems to have two or three cameras involved.

Riding: One thing I really liked about end search was the diversity of the riding. All street seems to be the fashionable video format these days but there are some of us out there who remember a time when skatepark (late 90’s) or trails (early 90’s) were at the forefront of bmx. It’s really nice to see a bit of ramp stuff in there, especially at a place like the unit where so much cool stuff is possible; they seem to have some nice trails over there too. I said this above, but I thought Ty Morrow’s part was the highlight. He has a section full of big, fast and smooth street riding and somehow comes out looking different than the average Chase D./Dakota clone. Josh Harrington’s part is basically three or four minutes of impossible tricks on ridiculous obstacles; he somehow manages to dwarf his bike even more than Mike Brennan, which is also an accomplishment. I thought Nyquist’s part was a little long; it’s full of cool stuff, but a lot of the variations he does are kind of similar and some of the repitition could have been cut. Rob Darden’s part was solid. Nothing groundbreaking, just lots of text book style… and he jumps over a road. Will Love dedicates his section to America, that was probably the best part. I wasn’t really into his style of frantically throwing tailwhips and barspins in the middle of lines, I’m sure it’s really hard though. His banger is ridiculous. Dave Dillewaard does some cool stuff, like a 180 toboggan to barspin and really nice inverts. He also has a really ugly looking bike, and I totally dig that.

I’d say this is well worth 20 bucks if you’re into videos, there was a trailer on vital if you’re curious.